Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Cloudstreet, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Chance, Choice, and Personal Responsibility
Family vs. Independence
Trauma and Guilt
Religion and the Supernatural
Shared Humanity
Summary
Analysis
Quick lies in the shade of a tree in the midst of a vast wheat field. He throws a bone to Bill, his dog, and teases him, spinning a knife on the back of a skillet to decide who’s doing the dishes after breakfast. Quick’s living on his own out in the country now, and he’s making money by hunting and killing kangaroos, which seem to be overrunning certain areas of the country and eating crops. Today, he demonstrates the skill he’s built up over the years, shooting several kangaroos out in the wheat fields with relative ease. He cuts off their tails with a machete and throws the tails into the back of his truck, letting the farmer who hired him do what he wants with the bodies.
It's notable that the first time Quick is shown away from his family back at Cloudstreet, he’s playing a game he learned from them: spinning a knife and asking it questions. This indicates right away that despite his new lifestyle of independence, Quick still thinks about his family, or at least maintains some emotional connection with them. It’s also a sign that he might return to Cloudstreet, or that he can’t escape his past no matter where he goes.
Themes
Quick notices that he missed one of the kangaroos, which seems to be lying and thrashing in the midst of the tall wheat nearby. He walks towards it and prepares to finish the creature off, but then it kicks him in the chest and sends him falling to the ground. Quick can only see stars above him and hears his dog whining and the kangaroo dying, and he slips into unconsciousness. It’s dark when Quick awakens and he knows that his truck is out of power, as the headlights are out.
It's possible that this encounter with the kangaroo is symbolic of what Quick is about to experience in regard to his trauma. By leaving Cloudstreet and living on his own, he hoped to let the past die and move on. But now, years later, he'll find out that the past isn’t dead. His trauma isn’t gone, and he’s surprised by its return, as unexpected as a kick from a kangaroo.
Themes
Suddenly, Quick sees his brother Fish sitting in an empty crate of oranges and somehow flying above him, rowing in his floating makeshift boat. Fish floats over the wheat as if it’s water and holds out a hand to Quick, beckoning him to join him. Quick hesitates, as this is a more grown-up version of the Fish he remembers, but he still has to try not to sob as Fish asks if he loves him. Quick insists that he can’t go with Fish because he can’t move, but he also asks Fish if he’s going home. Fish answers that he’s going to the Big Country. He pulls Quick’s whining dog into the crate and rows away, leaving Quick alone in darkness.
Like the strange boat ride with Fish earlier in the novel, Quick’s vision in the field is implied to not be a dream, but a real supernatural event. The Fish who calls out to him isn’t the Fish Quick would remember from when he left Cloudstreet; it’s an adult Fish, as if he really is visiting Quick in the present. It could still just be a hallucination, but the lines between dream and reality are blurred, and the vision deeply affects Quick all the same. It forces him to face his guilt over leaving Fish and the rest of his family, reminding him where he comes from and who he used to be.
Themes
Old Wentworth, the farmer who had hired Quick, finds him lying in the wheat that afternoon and tells him he’s lucky he was found, as he could have easily died otherwise. Quick passes out again and wakes up at night in Wentworth’s house, knowing that Wentworth is a strict employer who’s sure to cut his pay for this, but he feels grateful to be alive all the same. The next time he wakes up, he sees Wentworth’s daughter Lucy tending to his aching body by rubbing it with goanna oil. She flirts with him and tells him about her plan to open a florist shop in Perth, an idea she’d apparently come up with just a few minutes ago. She puts her hands in his boxers as she massages his body, and Quick doesn’t feel like objecting. When she leaves, he feels vaguely guilty.
Quick’s unexpected intimacy with Lucy Wentworth places him firmly in the adult world, far from his childhood and adolescence at Cloudstreet. Lucy is framed as an alluring figure for Quick, tempting him away from his visions of his past and calling him back into his carefree, independent life. However, Quick’s guilt afterwards reveals an inner conflict. There’s no particular reason he should feel guilty in this situation, but the experience feels like a betrayal to him. As hard as he tried to get away from Cloudstreet, a part of him still feels more loyal to his old home than to anything the outside world can offer him.
Themes
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In the following summer months, Quick continues his work hunting kangaroos and protecting people’s crops, missing his dog but earning good money. He also continues to see Lucy Wentworth, though their relationship is mostly sexual and Quick doesn’t think about her much during the day. One night during his work, he thinks he hears a kangaroo approaching through the wheat, but when he lights up the area, he sees that it’s a man running towards him. As the man approaches, Quick realizes that the man is himself; this other version of Quick runs past and into the night. This happens again from time to time, and Quick wonders if he’s delirious.
Once again, the edges of reality blur to give Quick an unsettling vision that seems to be a warning. Whether it’s a hallucination or not, Quick takes the vision of his other self seriously, wondering what it could mean. This is the second time in a row that the universe itself seems to be trying to tell him something. His independent life away from Cloudstreet might have given him peace for a few years, but it's becoming increasingly clear that something is drawing him back to face his past and his family.
Themes
Quick drives Lucy around the countryside in his truck with no particular destination in mind. The two of them get into an argument, as Lucy is annoyed at Quick’s withdrawn attitude and Quick is getting tired of Lucy’s constant teasing. Quick pulls the car over as they tentatively make peace, and Quick steps out to relieve himself by the side of the road. He hears a car coming around the bend and tries to hurry so he won’t be seen, even as Lucy prods and teases him more. She starts stripping and is nearly naked when the car comes around the bend and catches them both looking very compromised in its headlights. As it turns out, the car belongs to a shire clerk.
At this point, Quick gives up any pretense that his relationship with Lucy had been anything but sexual. His distant thoughtfulness following his visions puts him at odds with Lucy’s snappy and impatient attitude, and it quickly becomes clear that the two of them weren’t meant to be. It’s largely Quick’s guilt about the incident by the side of the road that compels him to leave town afterwards. Just as before, Lucy shows him a way of life that makes him feel wrong.
Themes
It isn’t long before the entire town is buzzing with gossip about what Quick and Lucy were apparently caught doing. Pleased with herself, Lucy begins negotiating for her florist’s shop first thing in the morning, while her mother wonders how she could ever show her face in town again. Quick packs up his truck and leaves within an hour, fleeing from the whole mess and knowing that the harvest will begin soon, meaning there’d be no more work for him anyway. He drives without knowing where he’s going until he spots a Black man in a pinstripe suit by the side of the road, hoping to hitch a ride. Without really thinking much about it, Quick pulls over and lets the man in.
Quick and Lucy’s reactions to the gossip about them highlights their differing attitudes towards family and independence. While Lucy happily takes advantage of the situation to arrange for a more independent lifestyle, Quick still feels lost and directionless without a family around to anchor him. His life at Cloudstreet was giving him grief, but his guilt and the visions are beginning to make him realize that running away from home might have been a rash decision nonetheless.
Themes
As he drives the man towards the city, Quick is almost tempted to tell the stranger his entire story, just to get it off his chest. They eat and drink together, and Quick feels strangely relaxed and comforted, asking about the man’s business and getting vague answers in return. Quick asks the man where to drop him off, and the man tells him to follow the railway line. He starts to sweat as the streets start to look familiar. He sees Cloudstreet in the distance and quickly asks where the man wants to be let out. The man points to the house and Quick drops him off at the corner. After getting out, the man asks Quick if he’s coming, but Quick just laughs nervously and speeds away in his truck.
Quick’s various reactions to the strange man throughout the trip highlight Quick’s conflicting feelings about the possibility of returning home to Cloudstreet. He feels comfortable and at ease with the man for most of the journey, but Quick only gets nervous when they approach Cloudstreet itself. This implies that Quick knows deep down that he might belong at Cloudstreet after all, but that he's unwilling to actually return or think about it consciously. The man asking Quick if he’s coming with him confirms that the man is some sort of supernatural presence urging Quick to return home, or at least an elaborate hallucination.
Themes
Quick keeps driving until he ends up back at his original hometown of Margaret River, where he’s hired as a truck driver by his father’s cousin Earl Blunt. Earl and his wife are tough and humorless people, hardened by the Great Depression, and Quick wonders if this was what the Lambs themselves could have become if they had stayed on their farm instead of moving to Perth. But Earl pays Quick well for his truck-driving work, and Quick tries to forget his old life and focus on making a living. However, he still holds onto his old habit of cutting out photos of unfortunate people from the newspaper and sticking them to his wall, and they still dance around him at night.
This observation about how the Lambs could have ended up like the Blunts foreshadows a later revelation Quick has about how trauma shapes people. Even his own trauma has already caught up with him, as he falls back into his newspaper clipping habit and fixates on misery yet again. The images dancing around his bed are another connection to his past and the supernatural forces apparently following him. Despite trying his best to stay independent and ignore these signs pointing him back to Cloudstreet, he’s already living with a family member again, and is living a very similar life to the one he had before.
Themes
Quick works for Earl for a year, telling himself that he’s recovering but secretly feeling lost, miserable, and homesick. But he continues to throw himself into his work and refuses to think about his past. He keeps an orderly schedule and drives the truck around constantly, whether for work or simply to lose himself. One winter night, the truck’s brakes fail on a downward slope as it approaches a railway crossing— as a train approaches. With an old Bible verse running through his head, Quick just barely manages to swerve the truck into a pile of dirt by the tracks. After digging it out and driving it back, he tells Earl what happened and Earl gives Quick a week off work, taking it out of his paycheck.
In the moments before Quick nearly crashes into the speeding train, he echoes his father Lester in an interesting way. Neither of them are particularly religious anymore, but both of them automatically think of appropriate Bible verses in times of stress, without meaning to. Earlier, Lester thought of the prodigal son as he hoped that Quick would return, and now Quick is mentally reciting Bible verses in what could have been his final moments. Years after Quick became independent and left his family behind, he still has more in common with the other Lambs than he realizes.
Themes
Quick spends most of his free week cleaning and fixing up Earl’s old boat, and towards the end of the week he sets out with it to go fishing on the river. He can’t help but remember the night that Fish almost drowned as he walks down the same beach, but he tries to ignore the thought. After trying to relax out on the water for a bit, he casts a line and immediately feels a tug. He pulls up the fish and finds that it’s two fish, one biting the tail of the other. He lowers his hook into the water again and gets another immediate catch, with somehow more fish this time. The silver-scaled fish multiply each time, practically jumping into the boat on their own and almost filling it completely.
Once again, Quick’s circumstances happen to lead him back to a river, reminding him of the accident that still haunts him years later. But trying to banish his trauma from his mind no longer works, as yet another supernatural event inevitably reminds him of Fish—the brother he left behind. Another miracle happens to a Lamb, but only to remind him of who he is and what’s truly important to him. Ironically, the river now gives Quick a bounty of fish—more than he could ever need—where it had once taken Fish from him. This adds another layer to the symbol of the river, making it not just a source of death and tragedy, but also of revelations and gifts.
Themes
Eventually, Quick tries to be sensible despite the impossibility of what’s happening. He starts rowing for the shore with his boat brimming with fish, and he spots a Black man seemingly walking on the water. As Quick reaches the shallows, all of the fish cough up blood and the boat sinks along with the fish. The Black man is on the shore when Quick reaches it, and the man seems to be holding back a laugh. Quick ignores him and walks past, but he keeps catching inexplicable glimpses of the Black man on his long drive home.
The fishes’ bloody demise reminds Quick that the river can take away just as easily as it can give. Meanwhile, the reappearance of the mysterious Black man from before signals that whatever spiritual entity is following Quick has doubled its efforts. The supernatural forces calling Quick home are finally refusing to let him continue living this way. Instead, he must once again face what happened all those years ago and return to his family. The Black man’s held-back laughter suggests to Quick just how futile it is to try avoiding his fate.
Themes
As Quick tries to sleep that night, his head is swimming with visions of his family and of the unfortunate victims from the pictures on his wall. The trip home from the river seemed to take three hours, despite it only being a 30-minute drive. He doesn’t feel like he’s going insane, but he knows that something feels off, making him unsure how to feel. Quick calls out in the night, and Fish seems to somehow hear it all the way in Cloudstreet. Fish lets out a terrible cry himself, waking the entire house.
At this point, all the spiritual forces conspiring to bring Quick home converge and force him to face the truth. The fact that Fish can hear Quick cry out confirms that these aren’t just hallucinations. In this moment, any possibility of Quick staying away from Cloudstreet gives way to an overwhelming sense of inevitability. He can no longer run from his trauma or his family, as those visions of himself were running. In this moment, he knows he must become Quick Lamb again.
Themes
In the morning, Earl and his wife find that Quick is glowing like a light bulb, and he seems unable to stop crying. They give him food and water and do what they can to get rid of the bizarre condition, but Quick continues to glow even brighter, against all reason. After deciding that a doctor is out of the question, Earl’s wife demands that they bring Quick to Perth, insisting that he “needs his own.” They take Quick into their truck (along with some pigs in the bed, to be delivered later) and set off for Cloudstreet. Earl warns that Oriel will probably be angry with them, but his wife tells him that it doesn’t matter; there’s no other choice.
Despite the interference of supernatural forces making Quick glow and giving him visions, returning to Cloudstreet is ultimately what Quick wants. The supernatural elements in this situation aren’t coercing Quick to go somewhere he despises. Rather, they’re only showing him what he’s been trying to block out of his mind: he wants to return to Cloudstreet, and he quite possibly belongs there. It may be difficult to face Fish again and return to what he ran away from, but Quick knows deep down that there’s really no avoiding it. As Earl’s wife says, he needs his own.
Themes
